This paper presents personal reflections on the nature of learning and the purpose of schooling and their implications for defining the work of professional development schools (PDSs). The paper examines the implications of intuitive learning, differences in learning, and political aspects of learning theory for professional development schools.…

A comprehensive reform of the science curriculum and the methods of teaching and assessing science instruction is underway. This booklet shares ideas drawn from research and promising practices in science education. These ideas are addressed specifically to educators, but are important to anybody concerned with science education in elementary,…

The roles of impersonal (or abstract) and relational (or connected) modes of knowing in the experiences of young adults were studied, and the ways the two converge are described in this report of the post-college phase of a 7-year longitudinal study of the epistemological development of college students, i.e., their assumptions about the limits,…

This book translates national and state standards into ideas from which teachers can build a workable learning program, clarifying the current language of standards and assessment and helping teachers identify how those standards and assessments can work in their schools or districts. Chapter 1 discusses recent history that has created the current…

The approach known as the Storyline Method was developed by a group of educators at Jordanhill College of Education in Glasgow (Scotland). The development of the Storyline Method took place over years, and the approach, with its simple framework of Storyline, key questions, and activities, has stood the test of time. Storyline uses the power of…

The U.S. Department of Education is supporting a 3-year program involving Virginia Tech's computer department and a rural public elementary school. The project seeks to determine whether immersive access to networked computing by students and their families has measurable effects on long-term student achievement. A fifth-grade classroom was…

In the past 25 years, there has been an explosion in research on the development of perception. The research has produced discoveries at multiple levels: ecological analyses, models of representation and process, and improved understanding of biological mechanisms. This book provides a comprehensive treatment of infant perception, bringing…

From a Catholic school principal's viewpoint, this paper explains why principals' technology leadership is essential and offers pointers on how to provide it. Computers have much to offer for progressive, constructivist teachers desiring to increase students' responsibility for their own learning. A survey of principals in 54 elementary schools in…

This study examines the construct of problem representation and the processes used by learners to construct or modify problem representations in problem-solving situations. Students (n=14) from freshman calculus courses at the University of California at San Diego participated in videotaped interviews in which they were asked to think aloud as…

Traditional elementary statistics instruction for non-majors has focused on computation. Rarely have students had an opportunity to interact with real data sets or to use questioning to drive data analysis, common activities among professional statisticians. Inclusion of data gathering and analysis into whole class and small group activities…

The Early Childhood Program in the Department of Curriculum, Instruction and Administration at Tuskegee University (Alabama) is described as a convergence of Jean Piaget's constructivism and John Dewey's progressivism. It is designed to provide preservice teachers with experiences that promote reflective practice and that view the learner as an…

The gap between learning and assessment is apparent both in the beliefs of children, who often see no connection between the two, and in the practices of teachers, who do not choose to use the most recently developed means of assessment. This gap stems from management theory and from learning theory. Traditional management in the United States has…

At Canada's University of New Brunswick (UNB), adult educators and computer experts jointly identified criteria for designing UNB's new Internet-based distance education delivery system called PSyCo (Presentation System for Courses). The 10 criteria that became the PSyCo blueprint were based on principles from three areas: architecture and design,…

Teaching the Internet is hard because the technology keeps changing, the system is complex, the environment is relatively unstable, and it is hard to know how much one needs to know in order to successfully use the Internet. The Internet is a pseudo-complex knowledge domain--the "rules" vary, and it is hard to tell which are the…

The knowledge that students bring to the classroom has been a well-studied domain. The types of knowledge studied have included content knowledge as well as epistemological beliefs that students hold. This study focuses specifically on preservice elementary education students' understanding of science and science learning as a meaning-making…